- A New Gathering Place Under the Wings of God & the Constitution

The Democrats Are Doing a Very Bad Thing to Brett Kavanaugh

We have reached a very strange and deeply disturbing point in the battle over Brett Kavanaugh. To make a long story short, news emerged today that Dianne Feinstein has reportedly possessed for months a mysterious letter that (according to the New York Times) alleges possible sexual misconduct between Judge Kavanaugh and a woman when they were both in high school. For those curious, Kavanaugh graduated from Georgetown Preparatory school in 1983. We don’t know the nature of the misconduct, the identity of the woman involved, or any other important fact about the claim. BuzzFeed claims that it contacted the woman, and she declined to comment.

The statement appears deliberately crafted to create the impression that Kavanaugh violated federal law without providing any evidence at all to support the suspicion. And now each and every news report about this mysterious letter raises questions about Kavanaugh that he can’t possibly rebut.

Feinstein’s conduct raises multiple questions. If the allegations are serious, why sit on them since July? Also, if the allegations are serious, why refer them to law enforcement just now? And why not ask Kavanaugh about the claims, even in a closed session? While we don’t know the contents of the letter, Feinstein has not behaved like a person in possession of blockbuster revelations. Instead, she’s behaving like a person engaged in a vicious smear.

This is a dreadful way to handle the situation. Already Twitter is lighting up with speculation about sexual misconduct that could violate federal law. Without knowing any single material fact, hundreds of thousands of Americans are wondering if a Supreme Court nominee is a sex offender. If there is a serious, credible claim against Kavanaugh, let’s hear it. And — let’s be clear — for his high-school conduct to be relevant 35 years later, the misconduct would have to be serious indeed. But if there is no serious claim, then Allahpundit is right — we’re witnessing “one of the dirtiest dirty tricks to damage a nominee in recent history.”

Update: It looks like the dirty trick theory just got a lot more plausible:

New — FBI does not now plan to launch a criminal investigation of the Kavanaugh matter; instead the bureau passed the material to the White House as an update to Kavanaugh's background check, via @mattzaphttps://t.co/Q1EJQiJLkT

If the FBI rejected a criminal inquiry that quickly, it makes you question whether Feinstein had a good faith basis for believing it was an FBI matter in the first place. I strongly suspect she did not.